


Falls the Shadow

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Bruce had known where Clark was going, he never would have let him go.  That's why Clark didn't tell him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falls the Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [落下影子](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12265077) by [nomuraqq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomuraqq/pseuds/nomuraqq)



Between the idea  
And the reality  
Between the motion  
And the act  
Falls the Shadow  
 _For Thine is the Kingdom_

Between the conception  
And the creation  
Between the emotion  
And the response  
Falls the Shadow  
 _Life is very long  
(T.S. Eliot)_

  
"I'm not an _invalid,_ Clark," Bruce snapped as Superman reached out to steady him. "I just need to get some rest."

He tried to hide his annoyance at himself as he strode across the Batcave. It had just been a little trip over a rough spot on the floor, it hadn't been vertigo. Yes, he'd had a bad headache yesterday, and yes, his joints were aching more than usual. But he'd run the requisite tests on himself and they'd all come up negative, so it was nothing that a good night's sleep wouldn't fix. There was no reason for Clark to be hovering over him like a garish mother hen.

"So what was it you needed to talk to me about?" he asked the Man of Steel as he checked the camera feeds.

"I was hoping we could sit down and maybe have a cup of coffee? I have a favor I need to ask of you."

"I'm pretty busy, but..." Bruce caught a glimpse of worried blue eyes. It would probably make Clark feel better if he wasn't working so hard while they spoke. "Okay, coffee it is."

"I'll run up and ask Alfred for a couple of mugs," Clark said, and disappeared up the stairs before Bruce could say anything.

Bruce sat down--more gingerly than he would have if Clark had still been around, favoring his aching knees--and rubbed his forehead, feeling another incipient headache lurking there. Clark appeared a few moments later, holding two steaming mugs. Bruce's coffee was--of course--just the way he liked it, strong and black. "This is really good," he said, taking a long sip. "Alfred must be trying a new blend."

Clark beamed at him. "I'm glad," he said, which seemed something of a non-sequitur.

Bruce waited for him to say more, but he seemed more intent on watching Bruce drink his coffee. Bruce took another mouthful and sighed almost involuntarily at the flavor--it was extra-strong, with a rich satiny texture that was pure nirvana to his aching head. It wasn't until his mug was empty that he realized they'd sat in silence, while he drank it all. He must be more tired than he'd thought. "So what's the favor, Clark?"

Clark took a sip of his own coffee. "I'm going to be off-planet for a while, Bruce. I'm afraid I can't share the details, either. But it's essential, I promise you."

Bruce frowned. "I don't like being kept out of the loop," he grumbled. "When will you be back?"

Clark hesitated. "It might be a while. I can't be sure." He bit his lip. "I was hoping in my absence that you could...you know, keep an eye on Ma for me. I know Conner's there, but..."

"But you worry about her." Bruce couldn't help a tired smile, shaking his head. "You worry about everyone."

Clark's answering smile was a touch wry. "Some people more than others."

"I'll do it, if you let me know what the deal was when you get back."

Clark nodded. "Of course. When I get back." He looked intently at Bruce. "Maybe you should get some sleep."

Bruce put down the mug, stood up and stretched. "Actually, I'm feeling a lot better," he said. It was true--the threatening headache had backed off, and the ache in his joints seemed to be subsiding. "See? I just needed to take a few minutes, catch my breath."

"Glad I could help," Clark said.

Bruce clapped a hand to his shoulder. "I can always count on you," he said, keeping it light enough that Clark wouldn't worry that he was worried about this secret mission. "Have a good trip, Superman."

"I'll do my best," said Clark, and he was gone.

Batman turned back to his work. His head was clearer than it had been in days. In fact, he understood now what the Riddler's last clue had been referring to. He returned to his investigation with new energy, with only a tiny part of his mind wondering how such a delicious cup of coffee could have such a strangely bitter aftertaste.

 **: : :**

Superman had been gone a week when the computer screen in the cave flickered to life on its own. Batman jumped to his feet as the craggy, impassive face of Darkseid stared out at him, the crimson eyes like banked coals alight with secret satisfaction. Behind him, the firepits of Apokolips burned sullenly.

"Greetings, despicable worm," Darkseid said. "I perceive that you have recovered from my Despair Toxin. I confess myself disappointed."

"Despair Toxin?"

For a moment, sluggish surprise moved across the grotesque features. "Of course. My curse that was gradually ending your insignificant life. Did Kal-El not tell you its fearsome name when he gave you the antidote?"

An intuition, chill as a razor-sharp blade, slid past Bruce's heart. He set his jaw and said nothing, glaring at Darkseid.

The god shrugged. "He did not speak to you of it? Strange. I believed you had sent him here with your blessing, to salvage your scrap of a life."

"Sent--" The word slipped out past Batman's control. The cave was growing gray around the edges, but he _would not_ grab for a handhold in front of Darkseid, _would not_ reveal how his heart was pounding.

"That was our bargain, mortal." A smile split Darkseid's features for the first time, rendering his face even more hideous. "His servitude for your life." Malice glowed in the pits of his eyes. "If he had been wise enough not to accept, I would have had the satisfaction of seeing your small and pitiful life snuffed out. But like so many of your kind, he has a pitiful weakness," Darkseid continued with a sneer. "He seemed to think your brief, insignificant span was worth the exchange. Witness."

He raised one massive hand and made an obscure gesture, and the computer screen flickered, focused on a new image.

It was part laboratory, part dungeon, the windowless steel walls lined with shackles and the room itself filled with all manner of vicious-looking machines. Batman recognized the Electro-spikes, the Fear Siphon, and the Psycho-Fuge at a glance. There were other devices he was unfamiliar with: delicate glass tubes filled with ichor, headbands lined with razor blades and suction cups, vises that shimmered with their own internal heat.

Batman's body was moving as if without his volition, the hands dancing across the keyboard, fixing coordinates, hacking the system. His eyes were still on the screen.

The whole place was flooded with red light, scarlet and thick as blood. And in the middle of the room--

Bruce did not flinch or cry out at the sight of the figure bound to a rack, bent backwards at an anguished angle. The bright clothing was in tatters, revealing skin streaked with blood both dried and fresh. A man in a magenta robe--Desaad, Darkseid's chief torturer--had his back turned to the rack, carefully wiping a knife dry. He dipped the blade in something dark, then turned back to the pinioned figure. The blade smoked as he lifted it. "Where were we?" he purred in a voice like clotted blood.

Superman opened his eyes. They fixed on Desaad, oblivious to the witness standing motionless countless light-years away, and they were still clear and defiant. He said nothing, but Desaad hissed and drew back for a moment. "Vermin," the torturer snarled. "You shall bow before Darkseid in rapturous submission once I am finished with you."

He raised the blade.

Batman felt sweat trickling down the small of his back. The cave seemed to be closing in on him. With a last effort, he typed the commands that would give him a tiny trap door into Darkseid's technology, fixing the camera in place at those coordinates. Then he stepped back as Darkseid's impassive face filled the screen once more, still as if he had never moved.

Darkseid smiled as if he were relishing something delicious, though Batman had shown no reaction. "Ah," his voice ground through the cave, " _This_ was my goal. That fool's suffering gives me little pleasure, for he still refuses to submit to despair's cruel ecstasy. But you..." An obscene tongue slid across gray lips and Bruce struggled with nausea. "Yes. Your anguish has a pleasant savor to me." He raised his arm, pointed at Batman. "Our score is not settled, little mortal. Consider this a small foretaste of my vengeance upon you. One day you will beg me for death." He smiled once more. "I shall grant it--eventually."

The screen flickered, faded. Bruce jumped forward to the keyboard and jammed open his tiny peephole to Apokolips before the connection could fail, wrenching the view back to Desaad's Evil Factory. On the screen, Desaad was humming slightly at his work, the knife glinting softly in the red light. Clark's eyes were closed again and beads of sweat stood out on his brow.

Bruce braced himself against the table for a moment, his eyes locked on the bloody tableau. He swallowed hard: once, then twice.

Leaving the screen on, he moved to the communicator.

 **: : :**

"--I'm telling you it might not even be possible!" Adam Strange stared down at the black-clad fist clenched in the fabric at his throat. "Zeta beams are not your personal cab service. It might be months--years--until one intersects Earth and those coordinates. It might _never happen_! Can't you use a boom tube--"

"--Scott Free and Barda are still missing, and their Mother Box with them." Batman's voice was flat and harsh. After a moment, he seemed to realize that he was almost throttling Adam, and he dropped his hands. "This is my--our--only hope."

"All right. I'll check." Adam fumbled for his beam detector, not looking at the screen behind him. He had seen more than enough in the first minutes he had arrived in the cave. Batman was facing Adam, but Adam had the eerie certainty that those flat white lenses were looking not at him, but beyond him.

The detector chimed. "You're in luck," said Adam.

"When?"

"Incredible luck. A Zeta beam will connect a point in India to the coordinates your camera is fixed on in slightly more than two weeks."

"Two weeks." Batman's voice was devoid of inflection. "Two weeks."

"It could have been _decades_ , Batman. Count your blessings."

Behind him, Adam could hear a soft buzzing sound, rising in pitch. "Turning now to the Mnemo-lash," said Desaad's voice with the tone of an academic lecturer. "This is a fascinating little device. When its tendrils caress your body, it releases different memories of pain, both physical and emotional. The results are slightly random, yet occasionally quite spectacular. But what am I doing, prattling on like this? As the saying goes: show, don't tell."

"Count my blessings," Batman echoed as the buzzing shifted into a crackling. There was a muffled gasp from the speakers and Adam winced. He held out two bracelets with large red buttons on them to Batman. "You'll have to use these to find the next point and time that will take you away from Apokolips when you get there. You won't have many choices, but anywhere's better than Apokolips, right?"

"Yes," said Batman. He took the devices from Adam. His eyes were still fixed on the screen.

After a time it became clear he had forgotten Adam was there, so Adam left him alone in the cave.

 **: : :**

"Damnit, Bruce, you've been holed up here for a week now. You need to get out, patrol--kick something, you'll feel better."

Bruce's hands danced on the keyboard. "You and Damian are doing great. I've got Tim to send to cover any sudden emergencies. I'm doing more good here, coordinating."

On the screen, Clark hung from the wall in shackles. One leg was bent at an unnatural angle. A parademon squatted nearby, reaching out now and then to prod the swinging man with a sort of dull curiosity. "You have to stop watching," Dick said.

"I have to keep the channel open or I'll lose the coordinates."

"Yes, but you can cover the screen," Dick said. "Or at least mute the sound. My God, Bruce--"

"--There's a fire in a warehouse in the East End," Bruce cut him off. "You and Damian should get over there."

Dick put a hand on Bruce's shoulder, shook him gently. "He wouldn't want you to torture yourself like this."

A cheerful whistling came from the speakers; Dick looked over to see Desaad re-entering the Evil Factory, rubbing his hands together with glee. Clark's sunken eyes watched him start to assemble his assortment of pincers and probes. Even dull with pain, even in the bloody light, they were still the blue of a cloudless sky.

"I'm not the one being tortured," Bruce said. Under Dick's fingers his body felt as rigid and fragile as black glass. He reached up and gently removed Dick's hand. "Go."

Dick looked back once more as he got into the Batmobile, but Bruce's eyes were on the screen and he didn't watch him go.

 **: : :**

Batman stood in a banana grove in Bhusawal India. All around him the wide green leaves rustled as if with secrets. It was a hundred and fourteen degrees, and the heat seemed to shimmer inside his own head, filling it with dire whispers.

The small screen he carried, hooked to the Zeta beam device, showed Superman shackled once again to the wall of the Evil Factory. Two parademons were kicking him back and forth, his limp body banging against the wall. For a moment Bruce wasn't sure he was breathing, but then Clark lifted his head briefly, biting his ragged lip before letting his chin fall back to his chest.

Only two parademons and no Desaad. Clark was nearly unguarded. Batman supposed he should be glad of that.

Instead, the thought that he might not get to wrap his hands around Desaad's scrawny throat filled him with desolate rage.

He found the spot in the field that the Zeta beam would intersect, glanced at his watch. Five minutes. Carefully, deliberately, he walked away from the spot, then turned and fixed his eyes on it like a gunslinger. At the last second counted down on the timer, he started to run toward the spot, his boots pounding the heat-baked earth with a steady, merciless rhythm. He held the screen before him, fixing the location of the two parademons in his mind. Something like a snarl stretched his mouth, something feral and anguished.

At the last second, he leaped into the air and whacked the button on his bracelet as he flew forward.

 **: : :**

Clark was staring straight ahead, ignoring the taunts of his guards, when a dark shape suddenly sprang into existence right in front of him. Its momentum carried it forward and both parademons dropped like rocks as two fists crashed into them.

Batman looked at a bracelet on his hand. "We've got fifteen minutes to be about a hundred yards to the west," he said, snapping a similar bracelet on Clark's wrist as he simultaneously picked the locks. The shackles gave way and Clark plummeted toward the floor, only to be caught by Batman, supported by an armored arm. "Let's go."

"What--" It came out a dry raven's croak, and Clark swallowed and tried again. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you," Batman said in a tone reserved for idiots and small children.

Clark staggered toward the door, propelled by Bruce's arm under his shoulder. "I didn't ask to get rescued!"

"I didn't either," Bruce said. He kicked open the heavy metal doors of the Evil Factory. Two more parademon guards turned in surprise, only to be felled by an electrified gauntlet. "No yellow sunlight on Apokolips," he observed. "We'll just have to make a run for it."

Clark looked at the expanse of jagged obsidian rocks between them and safety. His head was pounding and his broken leg shrieked protest. "Damn you," he said. "I didn't go through all that to just get _both_ of us killed!"

They lurched off the stairs and onto the dead and arid soil of Apokolips. "I have no patience with martyrdom," snapped Bruce, his voice sharp and ragged at the edges.

The heat was a spike in Clark's brain, every step an agony. Words spilled out of him like blood: "It's not _martyrdom_ to try and save the person I love, you pig-headed, self-righteous, arrogant--ow!"

His foot turned on a rock and he started to fall; Batman scooped him into his arms and started to lumber forward. There was a screeching howl from the skies and a parademon started to stoop down on them. Batman dodged and it crashed into a rock and went limp. There were other cries from the sky, cruel and triumphant.

Batman's voice was a raw wound, breathless from exertion. "I'm not about to let someone _I_ love do such a pointless, selfish, narcissistic thing like go off to be nobly tortured for me," he growled. "Hold on, I don't know where we're landing."

He jumped forward as fetid wings grazed past them, slapping the buttons on their bracelets.

They fell face-forward into salty water.

 **: : :**

Superman lay on a beach, staring up at the sun, his arms flung out along the golden sand. He could hear the waves lapping the shore, hear palm trees bending in the breeze. He could hear a finch hopping in the branches on the far side of the island.

He could hear Bruce's heartbeat.

The yellow sunlight had healed the worst of his wounds and made it possible for them to get to shore together, although flight was still out of the question.

Clark lay on the sand and let the sun soak into his battered body like balm.

"Here." Batman came up beside him, holding out a coconut half brimming with juice. Superman heaved himself slowly to a sitting position and took it from him, drinking deeply.

Batman sat down next to him on the sand, sipping from his own half of the coconut.

Together they gazed out at the sparkling water.

"I know this is completely irrational," said Clark, "But I have to tell you."

Batman made a neutral sound.

"When it...got bad," Clark said. "No matter how bad it got, I always felt somehow like you were...watching over me. Like I wasn't alone."

"You're right," said Bruce. "That is completely irrational." He took another sip of coconut juice. "How long do you think it'll be until you can fly?"

"Hard to say." Clark stretched an arm and winced. "Probably not for a few days. Sorry."

Batman raised one black shoulder in a shrug.

"Can't you call someone, have them come pick us up?"

Batman removed a small communicator from his belt, looked at it. "The sea water seems to have ruined it," he said. "What a shame." With a quick flick of his wrist, he tossed it into the ocean. "I guess we're stranded for a couple of days. On a beautiful island paradise. Just you and me."

"Oh," said Clark.

Batman pulled off his cowl; Bruce's eyes met his, darker than the sea and more beautiful. "So. About what you said on Apokolips."

"You mean when I called you pig-headed, self-righteous, and arrogant?"

Bruce's mouth tilted in a smile. "Slightly before that, actually."

"Ah, yes."

"Since we're here for a few days, would you be willing to expand on that?"

Those wry lips were very close to his now. "Only if you're willing to elaborate on certain things _you_ said."

Bruce's eyes were dancing as he leaned forward. "Call me pig-headed if you like, but nothing in the world--in _any_ world--could stop me at this point, my Clark."


End file.
